Dragon Age vs Tolkien redux: words

by Jeff

As a follow-up to my post comparing Fantasy à laBioware‘s Dragon Age with J. R. R. Tolkien‘s own imaginative world, I have the following to add. The one true aspect where Dragon Age is actually the most Tolkienesque is… linguistics. Dragon Age still remains rather unsophisticated for Tolkien-level standards, but it definitely represents a step in the right direction. I appreciate this franchise for this reason.

One must admit at the outset that there doesn’t seem to be much conlanging involved in the making of the Dragon Age universe. There might be an invented language, probably Elvish given what can be seen at various moments in the videogames. But there is no appearance of depth and therefore it is not convincing. If they worked on it, it doesn’t show. And it would be a pity.

As an aside, I remember seeing several years ago a job offer from Bioware for a linguist. The job was indeed to create a language for one of their games under development. I remember this very well, as it struck me that, except for wanting to relocate to Alberta, even temporarily, I had everything else required to apply. That was only being a linguist and knowing how to use Neverwinter Night’s development toolset.

In any case, here’s what the Dragon Age franchise gets right, in my book:

Firstly, the amount of original vocabulary is noticeably higher than average. I’m not talking about names of places, people and monsters: those are an absolute given in any self-respecting Fantasy setting. But in the course of usual conversation between characters, common words relating to how people address each other are original and belong firmly to this universe, not ours. They are used often and systematically, through superb and professional voice-acting, so that you get used to them quite naturally and you adopt them yourself, as a player. This ‘foreign normalcy’ is to me a very, very good feature of a fictional world. Moreover, a couple of noble titles have a familiarity that makes them work immediately. If Bann is not, as I believe, from baron, it’s still obvious that the Arl is from an earl. Writing Sir as Ser and applying it to women is also a reminder that this world is somewhat like ours, but not completely so.

Secondly, Dragon Age shows some vibes of the translator viewpoint, which I consider critical to the success and believability of a Fantasy world. In this particular setting, every culture seems to be associated with a different English dialect or foreign accent in the voice-acting. Where the spells break a little, as far as I am concerned, is the faux French of the Kingdom of Orlais, but I understand why they did this from the Anglo-Saxon point of view and I respect this as a native French speaker (albeit a little mockingly). Anyway, what this all implies is that the writers recognized that every distinct culture must be tangibly differentiated linguistically through a single medium for the product as a whole (in this case, English). This is so rarely part of the creative process in the treatment of Fantasy in the interactive entertainment industry (think videogames and movies, as books require different methods for this), that this feels like a breath of fresh air.

The bottom line is that the manner of expression should matter as much as what is expressed. That’s why naming new things and new people is truly insufficient when writing Fantasy. How you are talking about the world is perhaps an even bigger deal and a lack of commitment to this sometimes produces grossly unpolished results. I’m truly wondering whether the book it is based on has the same writing [Update: it has not.], but last Sunday’s episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones had a young and soon-to-be-married princess talk about the family gene pool. [Second update: I did not realize at the time that they were talking about someone named Gene Pool. How silly. This fully invalidates my example, but these things do happen and I will keep it here.] To me, that was just plain silly: this is too modern a scientific concept to be believable in a Fantasy setting that is inescapably modeled on our past. The Witcher, a very enjoyable game based on the work of a Polish writer (who seems to have had genuine success in its native language), errs even more on this side: the genetics talk is as absurdly modern as it is matter-of-fact. Nothing in the fictional world as presented by the game can explain why they know that stuff. But we ourselves did not come up with this knowledge out of the blue, in a scientific and ahistorical vacuum. Darwin himself didn’t know about genes. How do people still fighting with swords would know about them? Writing Fantasy is not replaying a Civilization technology tree chart abuse. Therefore, not only do I believe Fantasy should be about the past, but it should be committed to it. In other words, Fantasy should be philological. And the cardinal rule seems to be this: use language accordingly.

This is not nitpicking. Fantasy must be chosen for a reason. If it is not the past, what is it? There are many ways to write about modern problems through historical lenses. J. K. Rowling explores racism, through the Muggle vs. Pure blood issue, without ever mentioning the r-word, and Harry Potter is a contemporary British kid. One then just needs to be inventive. And that’s just the whole point of writing.

5 Comments to “Dragon Age vs Tolkien redux: words”

Hmm. I wonder if you might expand more fully on your thinking regarding the “Translator Viewpoint”. I just responded to your use of that phrase in another comment, but I now wonder if I understood your use of it correctly, and suspect that I did not.

I mostly agree with what you’ve written here, and I mostly have similar aims in my own work. I think I disagree with this notion that Fantasy is necessarily about the past, per se. My problem with phrases like “gene pool” or discussions of genetics in a certain fantasy story is not whether this is something that people in our past knew about, but whether this is something that people in the context of a given fantasy story’s present would know about. In the case of the “Game of Thrones”, it’s quite ridiculous, because the available contextual information about the world leaves little doubt that knowledge of genetics is not yet discovered in this world. Clearly, I think, the phrase was being used for the modern colloquial meanings the phrase implies… but a better writer would’ve found a contextually-appropriate phrase that suggested the same meaning without the unfortunate contextual anachronism.

One writer who thinks about issues like this an awful lot – though I have not read any of her books as yet – is Mary Robinette Kowal. She writes in an alternate-earth Regency period with magic, and as part of her process she created a “Jane Austen” spell-check dictionary to help her weed out words and phrases that were anachronistic, didn’t exist in the Regency period, or had very different meanings from what they do today, so she could deal with those words on a case-by-case basis. That’s quite a wonderful attention to detail.

I just wanted to add to my point about Fantasy being “past”-oriented or not: I find it perfectly reasonable to presume a fantasy setting where, for instance, knowledge of genetics was actually generally available, or one even where their knowledge of genetics had surpassed our own – and for the story to still be firmly “fantasy” and not at all “science fiction”. I can imagine a true fantasy that takes place in a futuristic setting or in a contemporary-parallel setting, or in any variety of setting. There are, in fact, numerous contemporary fantasy stories right now, and they’re kind of all the rage. For that reason, I just don’t find that there’s anything intrinsically past-oriented in fantasy. I think what makes something fantasy is something else, something both larger and smaller, and something which in the modern era we more often associate with the past but which is not intrinsically part of the past but not the present or future.

I was replying this comment when I realized this should make a blog post in itself. I’ll post it soon. You’re helping me clarify my ideas, so I have to thank you heartily for that. I do know I have an extremely narrow view of Fantasy (not of all Fantasy, by the way, just what I think is good Fantasy) but my hope is that, even if you (and everyone else) disagree with it, you’ll find it at least understandable and coherent.

PS: You also should not surprise yourself that I find this work of Mary R. Kowall (I did not know about her) immensely interesting.

Funny that you mentioned the Witcher since I remember reading Sapkowski’s words about how he viewed that fantasy doesn’t have to be set in some strictly set archaic or historical ‘time period’ in terms of language or concepts since it is a world in itself different (though his world is in some ways full of contradictions), in his imaginary world the wizards, mages/sorcerers however you call them are in a way combining scientist with arcane magic user, the magic while also chaotic and mysterious is also given some sort of rules and nearly scientific theory. So such archaisms as genetics, mutation, things that do not fit with any quasi mediaval setting in science, architecture, customs, language and alchemy, monsters (often thought about in scientific terms mixed with supersition among the commoners).

Magic apparently allows for regeneration of organs, yet medicine itself is little developped in comparison also magic is used for various things sometimes even causing development in many spheres of life (and that’s why mages gain great influence and riches, since they offer their services to wealthy population even as advisors of kings, but of course there are also those who help poor like druids or priests who wield some sort of magic they view as more divine power or power from prayer to their divinity, Sapkowski himself appears to be atheist though 🙂 in some ways he is like George Martin with their dark fantasy, with gritty often obscene espects, with which those two try to make more ‘realistic’ fantasy though in my opinion they miss the point, even Tolkien put mind to such mundane things like realpolitic, logistics, elven sexuality, incest, economy or whatever but he had style, he had timeless themes set in and moral values 🙂 while the two worlds of those authors have little of that), in book Time of Contempt it is mentioned that mages among themselves often quarrel about status of magic, whether it should be more widespread or remain more for the elite, they view magic as art to some extent and science to other and view those of lower end of magical world like witchers using simplest spells known as Signs with contempt (Yennefer teachings about magic in Blood of Elves are main example).

The witcher world has some modern phrases or concepts like ecology and biological sciences, also sociology or economy much more fitting for other time periods than mediaval (the dwarven banks and high finance for example) technologically dwarves and gnomes the oldest races on continent are the most advanced yet they rarely share it with humans, the Empire of Nilfgaard has some elements of Roman Empire set in (and the state of Nilfgaard itself is older than Northern Kingdoms yet they are not much more advanced than the Nordling in technology or even apparently magical knowledge) so witcher world is rather curious mix. There is lot of such archaisms (but they appear also in Tolkien, the clock on a mantlepiece of Bag End, time measure with hours, minutes and even seconds, some cultures are enriched with some things not fitting to them). Tolkien in a way reached higher level, his world perfectly blends mundane with magical, mystery and mythological aspects with detailed and realistic portrayal, he simply retains balance.

Hi, and thank you for your comment! I apologize for the delay in my answer, I was away on a wonderful trip to Wales, visiting medieval castles. 🙂

It’s interesting what you say about Sapkowski’s words, but they cross a line where I do not wish to tread (and finding a way to express that is one purpose of this blog).

Of course anybody can mix and match anything and everything and call it Fantasy, and write wonderful stories at the same time.

But there are things that will break suspension of disbelief for each of us, and this is one for me.

Genetics and mutation are not isolated pieces of knowledge — they are built upon a deep historical development of ideas, so much so that in fact genetics is quite contemporary. Hell, Darwin didn’t know about genes.

So the problem I have with that is the taking of ideas part of a system, and putting them in a context lacking most, if not all, of the premises.

Therefore, to me, such scientific concepts — and words — are anachronistic to a point much, much more perilous than simply having an advanced clock, which is not saying much, since pendulum clocks date from the 17th century.